1. Field of the Invention
The technical field primarily concerns permanently bonding side-to-side glass or plastic building blocks to obtain decorative and/or functional modular sub-assemblies, walls, panels, floors, windows, skylights, etc.
2. Description of the Known Prior Art
The conventional methods for bonding such building blocks employ bonding compositions, such as mortar, cement, grout, caulking and/or silicone. At least for commercial applications, mortar still remains the prevailing bonding medium. Optionally, a silicone or grout sealant is typically applied over each mortar joint to seal it against mold or mildew.
As judged architecturally, aesthetically and structurally, the quality of such glass block units depends to a large extent on the uniform alignment of the mortar joints within a common row and between successive rows in horizontal and vertical directions. Such uniform joint alignments depend, among other things, on the volume of mortar the installer spreads on and around each glass block.
Since the mortar volume is generally "eye-balled", obtaining consistent joint alignments becomes a challenge even for the expert artisan. Do-it-yourselfers fear joint misalignments which might make their finished glass block panels or walls structurally and aesthetically unreliable. Such joint uniformity is necessary within a completed glass block unit to make it structurally sound and pleasing in appearance.
Also, the use of mortar adds considerable weight to a glass block assembly and reduces the construction speed since only a limited amount of mortar can be mixed, as the mortar's curing time controls the speed of assembly and finish. The number of courses of blocks that can be laid up at a time is also reduced due to the concern that the excessive weight of the freshly laid up blocks in the upper rows may squeeze the mortar out from the fresh mortar joints in the lower rows.
It is evident, therefore, that the known mortar methods for assembling glass/plastic blocks require skilled artisans to properly align their completed mortar joints, and to maintain the joints' width uniform during the whole installation leading to a completed building block unit.
Also, such known mortar methods can create serious health hazards from prolonged exposure to conventional bonding and sealing materials: mortar, cement, grout, caulking and/or silicone. They tend to generate dust and release chemical gases, all of which in accumulation can produce lasting injuries to block laying artisans and others on the worksite. As a consequence, builders were discouraged from extensively using glass and/or plastic blocks except for relatively expensive custom homes and overhead applications such as skylights.
To obviate some of such adverse effects, many patents suggest using separate rigid interlocked spacers for aid in forming grid-like structures intended to surround and maintain the individual glass or plastic blocks.
In particular, U.S. Pat. No. 5,430,985 describes longitudinal spacers 10 for enclosing the center ridges 76 that extend peripherally around and between the lateral faces of the glass blocks. Each spacer 10 has opposite longitudinal center sections. Each section has a rectangular, longitudinally-extending groove 42 dimensioned to receive an opposite glass block center ridge 76. Fasteners 50 mechanically interconnect adjacently positioned spacers 10. Pressure-sensitive, adhesive-coated foam bands 44 are used for aligning grooves 42 relative to their opposite block center ridges 76. Abutting glass blocks 72, spacers 10, and fasteners 50 are permanently bonded to one another using mortar or silicone compositions.
It is a main object of this invention to use light-weight, action-activatable adhesive tapes to adhesively bond building blocks and to provide a relatively fast, easy, clean, and economical method for producing single or multi-tier building block units, wherein each block remains strongly bonded side-to-side to its abutting blocks, and wherein the inter-block joints have a uniform width dimension determined mostly by the thickness of the used adhesive tapes.
It is another object of this invention to overcome the above mentioned and other undesirable effects associated with the prior art mortar and mortarless methods for bonding building blocks, generally, and in particular for bonding blocks made of glass or plastic.